Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 64:4 (Dec 2021)
Article: The Name Ritual: A Mark Of Significance
Author: C. Jeff Foster

JETS 64:4 (December 2021) p. 703

The Name Ritual: A Mark Of Significance

C. Jeff Foster*

* C. Jeff Foster is a PhD student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 120 S. Wingate St., Wake Forest, NC 27587. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: This article engages linguistic analysis, literary criticism, and facets of discourse analysis to establish the “name ritual” as a phenomenon, discussing how it imparts significance to the person or place marked by it in the Hebrew Bible. This article shows how the phenomenon is marked in the Hebrew text (a name clause, explanation, and a Leitwort in common between the two parts) and how it applies significance to the person or place named in the narrative structure. The result of this study shows the name ritual to be consistent in seventy-four of the seventy-five occurrences (1 Samuel 1:20 is the exception). As a rhetorical device it marks a person or place as significant to the narrative, with the degree of significance determined by the narrative context where the name ritual occurred.

Key words: oral tradition, composition, naming event, Leitwort, parallelism, rhetorical device used to mark significance

Names are often understood to contain the essence or character of a person.1 Most studies of names focus primarily on the etymology and construction of each name. Richard Hess, for example, examines the names in Genesis 1–11 and compares them with other Semitic languages.2 Such studies are certainly helpful in understanding how names are constructed and in what language a name may have originated. But these studies may not explain why a name matters in its narrative.

Numerous passages contain lists of names, genealogies, and narratives with naming. But why should the audience care about some characters over others? As many scholars have noted, the most common way for a character or place to receive a name is using the phrase קרא followed by שם. There are a total of one hundred eleven occurrences of קרא followed by שם in the Hebrew Bible.3 In seventy-four of these occurrences, the character or place name is followed by an explanation clause (usually introduced by כי, על־כן, or אמר) and tied together by parallelism between the root of the name with the...